Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program

The Sevilleta LTER Program (SEV) addresses ecological concepts and theory through an interdisciplinary research program in desert grassland, shrubland, woodland, forest and riparian habitats in central New Mexico. Our primary study site is the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge . SEV is member of a network of sites established by the National Science Foundation.

Globally, aridlands are exhibiting transitions from grass- to shrub-dominated communities and widespread tree mortality in response to chronic drought, large fires and/or insect outbreaks. These sudden and dramatic changes, all represented in SEV research, have important consequences for evapotranspiration, net primary production, carbon fluxes, consumer populations, and biodiversity. Our work combines long-term observations and manipulative experiments to test specific hypotheses on the response mechanisms and consequences of future climatic change.

Sevilleta News

During January there was only a slight reduction in the warm and dry
trend that has been the case through most of this winter. However some
of the coldest days of the winter came during the middle of January
but overall the temperatures ran above normal during the early part of the month
and again at the end. With the continuing dry conditions the daytime
highs again ran mostly higher than normal while the nighttime lows ran

La Nina continues to rule. As in November, New Mexico and most of the southwest spent most of December locked under a great big high
pressure dome. Consequently temperatures soared and precipitation was negligible. The 55 degree F average daily high temperature ran 6 degrees F warmer than the normal daily high temperature of 49 degrees
F. This ties 1995 as the warmest average daily high temperature in the past 29 years. Seven out of the last eight days of the month set new